Thursday, January 17, 2013

I’ve come to realize that as you reach a certain age, you start to look back at an earlier point in your life more and more. A friend of mine who turned 40 last year commented that he has basically stopped watching what is on television currently and with the wonders of Hulu.com, he has taken to watching television shows of the 70s and 80s. For my friend, he loves watching these shows because it is a wonderful memory of an earlier time.

I can understand what my friend is talking about. I love watching the old commercials of my childhood at YouTube. Marketers have noticed that people are interested in nostalgia and have come up with special editions of products that are packaged like they were in the 1960s or 70s. A few weeks ago, I was shopping at Target and happened to notice that Pepsi was packaging its usual pop in the look and logo of the early 1970s. For me, I was immediately catapulted to that time when I was a little kid and was at a picnic where everyone was gathered and drinking Pepsi in the this same style.

I’ve seen other products do this like cereals and other soft drinks. Of course, it’s a way to get people to buy the product, but they also know that it hits on our desire to want things like they used to be.

Nostalgia is an interesting thing. It’s not a necessarily bad, but it is incredibly powerful. We love to do look back at the past with a sense of wonder. It gives us comfort for a time when things seemed less complicated.

Churches tend to deal with nostalgia as well. We love to look back at the time when the sanctuaries were full and the Sunday School program was the greatest in all the world. Among mainline churches, we love to look back at the past because we want to go back to that time, when things seemed a whole lot easier.